10 Lesser-Known But Important Human Senses

Most people think that there are only five senses—but others who are in the know actually put the number at twenty-one. So when someone tells you that they have a sixth sense, they are most likely correct—though it doesn’t necessarily mean they can see the future.

Our extensive range of senses is often quite surprising to people, until they realize that they use them every day without thinking about it. Many of the human senses that we take for granted are incredibly important to our regular function—as you’ll see:

10

Sense of Fullness

When you’ve had enough to eat and drink, your body always seems to let you know. It turns out that this is a separate sense within your body, involving its own cluster of sensory receptors that tell you when you need to stop eating. Some of these are stretch receptors, which let you know that your stomach is becoming full.

The stomach also sends your brain certain signals as the food is digested—which means that if you eat your food slowly, you’ll feel more full than if you ate the same amount in a shorter period of time. Your brain basically needs time to catch up with what your body is doing.

9

Thermoception

This one might not be too surprising—but it’s important to note that your sense of hot and cold is not just part of your sense of touch, but in fact a separate sense of its own.

Our thermo-receptors detect both hot and cold, among other things letting our bodies adjust to temperature change in our environment. The thermo-receptor signals are delivered via the spinal cord, and eventually reach the thalamus, where they inform us of what we need to know.

8

Sense of Oxygen Levels

The purpose of “peripheral chemoreceptors” is to keep an eye on the blood in your arteries, monitoring the oxygen level, as well as the amount of carbon dioxide and the ph level. This alerts your body when the levels of carbon dioxide are too high, thereby allowing you to exhale at the correct rate. Additionally, your body has receptors which tell you how full your lungs are, so that your brain knows when to stop breathing in.

7

Chemoreceptor Trigger Zone

The “Chemoreceptor Trigger Zone” basically communicates with drugs or hormones that are carried through your body via the bloodstream; besides this, it also tells your body when to throw up.

If this sense is damaged, it can lead to regular, uncontrollable vomiting, or sometimes a complete loss of the ability to vomit. Such damage usually occurs as the result of a stroke.

6

Magnetoreception

Did you know that your body can potentially figure out your direction, based on its sense of the earth’s magnetic fields? While there remains some debate as to how capable we are of using this sense properly, it would obviously be incredibly useful for navigational purposes if we were able to harness it.

Some people seem to have an uncanny sense of direction, and it seems possible that they might be employing magnetoreception on a more advanced level than the average human. It’s even possible for some people to instantly know which direction they’re facing—North or South—without the use of a compass. This sense is more common and more pronounced among other animals, such as bees, birds, and even cows.

5

Vestibular Sense

The vestibular sense is also known as “Equilibrioception”, which sounds suspiciously like a certain mind-bending movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio. It’s more commonly known as a “sense of balance.” As many of us have learned the hard way, the vestibular sense can be severely impeded by drinking large amounts of alcohol.

Your sense of balance is regulated by your inner ear—and though it is part of the system involved in hearing, it is considered to be a separate sense altogether.

4

Itching

There is much more to the common annoyance of itching than you might think. For starters, that itch you occasionally have is actually completely separate from your sense from touch, and serves important functions.

While it may seem more like a nuisance than a useful tool, an itch is nonetheless important, since it sends a message to your body that something isn’t entirely right with that part of your skin.Sometimes this skin may be merely dry, and other times there may be microscopic bugs lurking in your hair follicles, which need to be removed through scratching.

Taken simply, an itch is basically a signal from your body to your brain that you need to take a look at the affected area, and find out what’s going on.

3

Nociception

Nociception is the sense that allows you to feel pain. Some suggest that this should be lumped in with touch—but though the two are often combined, pain is still an entirely different sensation. Not only that, but some researchers believe that pain should be broken up scientifically into three separate senses, each relating to a different kind of pain: pain located on the skin, pain involving your bones, and pain felt in the organs themselves.

While these are more like subcategories than separate senses, the point is that there is much more to pain than meets the eye. If you didn’t feel pain, you might take risks or put off treating something serious; it’s basically a signal that your body is in trouble.

2

Chronoception

Chronoception is your sense of the passage of time. Most of us have a fairly good perception of time, and younger people are especially accurate in this way.

Part of this sense is governed by the suprachiasmatic nucleus, which is what controls our circadian rhythms. Though our ability to perceive the passing of time is on the whole very useful, it can often be fooled—much like any of our other senses. We all have days when we feel that time is passing more slowly or more quickly than it really is.

1

Proprioception

Proprioception is essentially the sense of where your arms and legs are in relation to the rest of your body. This is what the police are testing, when they drag you out of the car for a field sobriety test and make you attempt such things as touching your nose with your finger. We all take this sense for granted every single day—but we would sorely miss it if it were taken from us.

There are rare cases—still largely a mystery to doctors—in which people lose their sense of proprioception. If this happens, the most simple and ordinary tasks—opening a door, picking up a cup, using a pencil—become the most difficult chores. Such people have to carefully watch every movement of their limbs in order to use them successfully.

I never feel hungry. I have no real clue what someone means when they say they are “starving” or ” hungry enough to eat a horse” or just normally “hungry”. I eat pretty much because it is time to eat and my husband reminds me to.

I don’t know if I have better magnetoreception than most, or I just pay better attention, but I never get lost. As long as I know where I was when I left, I can always get back. Going someplace entirely new? Just find out where it is; quick peek of a map; somebody tells me where it’s near; point me in the general direction—I’m good to go. Hubby though? Forget it. Too busy looking at the GPS to look where he’s going. He’s learned to trust my sense of direction (it required some tense moments in the car, let me tell you, men don’t like it when you’re superior to the toys).

That fullness receptor is very important; pretty sure everybody’s seen the CSI episode with the guy who ate himself to death. Missing that fullness thing, a symptom of some form of congenital defect. Scary. Read a study too, that a large percentage of the morbidly obese, make too little of some hormone that helps register fullness and satiation. If you never feel full or satisfied, you’re going to keep going.

Itching is not a funny thing. When I’m pregnant, each and every time, I suffer what’s called the cholestasis of pregnancy. The bile getting to the gall bladder gets all screwed up, dumping that crap into my blood stream. Itched and scratched until I bled. Rubbed my eye brows and eyelashes off, basically abraded the skin off my feet and lower legs. There is no relief, besides popping out the kid. Did find a bit of numbness, sitting in the living room, legs and feet in a huge pot of ice water. More fool me—did it 4 times.

That’s because I only reveal choice details. I don’t mention how horribly impatient I am, or how I scatter stuff everywhere I go, or how ridiculously stubborn and pig headed I am. Did I mention bitchy and conceited yet?

hahahaha! I could get lost in an empty square room with one door.
Actually, I always know what direction I am going, as long as I can see either the sun or the ocean, but driving to a particular location? No. I need a map or, better, GPS….the driving part is a moot point, though, since I quit driving almost 10 years ago.

I have lost sense of fullness. I lost it two years ago and i would eat until i felt the food push up into my esophagus. you dont appreciate things until you lose them. I have to ask if other people are full so that i know when i should stop.

The brain is amazing. All the stuff that it does behind the scene that we will never even think twice about. This is an absurd question and a rather stupid one, but think, do YOU control your brain? Its more of a case of conscious vs subconscious, but I find it fascinating and when I refer to YOU im referring to the conscious part of your brain.

Now I know what you are thinking: “You are your brain therefore you do control your brain since you and your brain are one.”. Yes that is true, but my point is more of how you can trick your brain with illusions even when YOU know its an illusion but your brain still cannot figure it out. Its like with the pictures of shapes appear to be moving, but they are not. You know they arent moving, but you cannot communicate to your brain that its not moving.

Another example are with smokers. You know smoking is bad and that you should quit, especially after your teen/early twenty years. Your brain however demands that you smoke and makes your body feel horrible if you dont. I know your brain comes into contact with the addictive substance, but you would think that since YOU know smoking is bad, then your brain will just find a way of rejecting it since it knows its bad.

YOU also cannot chose what you dream… the brain decides for it self. I am fascinated with the parts of the brain you can control and the parts you cannot. I cannot wait to see how many people call me stupid haha.

You do not control your brain. You may think you do, but if you’re unlucky enough to get schizophrenia or some other brain disease, you may change your mind. You probably don’t want to hear voices or see hallucinations, but that’s what your brain is doing to you, if you catch a brain disease. The SSRI and SNRI medications (fluoxetine, sertraline, etc.) used to treat these conditions may in some cases actually worsen the symptoms and not be helpful at all.

You may not be able to choose what you dream but you can, with practice, choose to control the direction of what you do dream…you can learn to recognize when you are dreaming and so make the dream do what you want it to do.

check out the work of Neuroscientist Dr. V. A. Ramachandran, he’ll help you finish that thought…

i.e. When you choose to move (your finger to your nose, for instance), your brain sends signals to move before you even perceive that you’ve made the conscious choice to move. There is a delay between [the initial neuro-message] and [your motion/perceiving your intention to move] so that you feel like you intend to move in sync with the movement. So is consciousness a soul all locked up in a body or a neat little projection to help unify you: an animal?

How about the itch you can’t scratch? Like the one just under the skin. You can feel it, but it’s not really there. Phantom itch! Drives me bonkers. I knew there were more “senses” but didn’t realize there were so many.

An itch is never under the skin, even if it may feel like it was. Also, you can relieve an itch by scratching beside it (for example, if you have an itchy laceration that you shouldn’t touch, you can relieve the itch by scratching right next to it.) Also, if you know about acupuncture, or acupressure, you can scratch another part of your body entirely, and it still helps. Believe it or not. :)

Nobody believes in God bcoz he is not “”real” lol but everyone believes in time which can’t be proven & is different around tha world & would be totally different on any planet. There is no such thing as time.

Be thankful for vestibular sense! My balance is absolutely shite (dodgy ears) I couldn’t walk down stairs by myself until I was like 6, and all throughout my childhood when I was in bed it would feel as if it was tipping in all directions, just having the mattress on the floor has helped though and every night I dream of falling either down stairs or off a bed and feel it VERY intensely. If I stand with my feet together I just fall over and even with my feet apart I wobble when standing. It SUCKS :/

I know exactly what you mean. I get bouts of a thing called Benign Positional Vertigo. It causes the room to appear to spin, and makes standing, rolling over, or even moving your eyes almost impossible. I end up in hospital when this happens so I can get the proper treatment. BPV is nasty!

As a neurodevelopmental specialist, I love this list, although many of these are often awkwardly classified as types of tactility or sense of touch. Fullness is seen as a type of proprioception. Vestibular functioning and proprioception are very important to mental health. Love the sense of magnetism: I haven’t checked that one out.

Huh. Never thought that having no sense of body was rare, let alone that it had a name. Figured all clumsy people had a bit of a problem with it.

Unless I’m paying extremely intense attention to myself and what I’m doing, I’m always knocking into things, breaking things, twisting my limbs and torso up in ways that are unnatural, and generally causing havoc to myself, those around me, and my environment. I also get fits where I can’t make anything move and just kind of… Am there. Lot’s of trouble breathing when that happens too.

I also have a poor sense of time and balance, and feel as though I am in constant, excruciating pain.

There are some of the best comments on this page! I see no trolling only witty sarcasm and banter. Good audience! And great article, although I believe I got passed over when it comes to chronoception… oh damn have to go to work!

Maybe I’m the only one that experiences this but I will be on the computer and my hub is watching tv I will be reading something and I will hear someone on tv say the exact word that I’m on at the exact moment, well really seconds, and this can be on radio and I’m reading and that will happen , or I’ll be riding and I see a billboard and I’m reading it and on the radio, someone speaking or in a song, the same thing happens….and it’s not words that or simple, they have become so frequent and the words or uncommon , that it can’t be a coincident..any thoughts?